Garrard 301 restoration project

Sorry for being thick, but did you order the plinth WITH veneer and varnish?
And, of course, a beautiful TT!!!!

Regrads Mike

Mike,

The plinth came as you see it in the picture, the guy that makes them offered me the option of various wood veneers but I choose that one. Once I told him my selection he veneered and varnished the plinth for me. So what you see is what was delivered.

Andy

The 301 is now firmly bolted into place and the plinth is doing what its designed to do. The deck is silent with the platter spinning and I hear virtually no noise whatsoever in between tracks. A little fine tuning with the cart and arm alignment and also finalising the decks placement should prevent the possibility of hum and bring out the best in the deck. Just listening to some Bach and it sounds excellent through my ATC's. :D

Another small change today, Koetsu black has now gone and is replaced with the Denon 103, I think this is a much better match for the 3012 than the Koetsu.

Been away too long... just got caught up. It's looks sweet.

Did you give up on the mat?

I've found that simply using the 301 with no mat is good enough for me. I'm in the process of reviewing a wonderful new phonostage called the Paradise which I think could just be a perfect partner for the 301. Accoustic music through the paradise and the 301 is so accurate it's frightening.

Well. The 301 is about to undergo some tweaks. I'd like to try and dampen in and around the motor housing. Expect some pics soon!

The 301 will be partnered with some very nice external cross overs for my 15" MG's. :eyebrows: Now it should sound very nice indeed.

Been fettling and tweaking the 301. The 3012 need some soldering and I have modified the plinth with som new spikes, this certainly beats the blocks of 4x2 which sat under it previously :eyebrows:. The deck and platter are now perfectly level. Next wee tweak will be some silver cartridge tags and a new headshell and cartridge body for the denon 103. Finally MCRU should be sending me a little package with some upgrades for the mains leads going into the 301. Pictures to follow when it's all sorted. Next I will be looking at further dampening the tonearm mount and the platter.

The 301 is now undergoing some major upgrades. At the moment it looks like this

http://i98.photobucket.com/albums/l2...psfa650c93.jpg

The SME 3012 is now having a holiday with J7 at Audio Origami its having a lovely new IKEDA silver rewire and fettle. This will take approx. 3 weeks.

I have also been busy changing the SME mount. I have now added a 3mm sorbothane SME cutout. The idea behind this is simple. It gives the 3012 3mm additional cartridge clearence of the platter, very useful for SME arm :eyebrows: and it further stops any vibration nasties getting into the tonearm. I could have had a plinth with external tonearm mount but the price was far too high and I believe the isolation coupling should work quite well to cloth like ears.

So this is what the tonearm mounts looks like before the new sorbothane coupling

http://i98.photobucket.com/albums/l2...psaf15675d.jpg

And this is what it looks like afterwards.

http://i98.photobucket.com/albums/l2...psb8623bb1.jpg

I now have some lovely new speaked feet from eBay which now allowing levelling of the plinth in double quick time. Here is a pick of the new feet

http://i98.photobucket.com/albums/l2...pse347227f.jpg

As you can now see the plinth is dead level

http://i98.photobucket.com/albums/l2...ps28327e2d.jpg

I have also created some additional dampening to the mount bolts of the SME tonearm mount. These were made from spare scraps of sorbothane. Nobody can see them so I'm happy with the appearence.

http://i98.photobucket.com/albums/l2...ps1c76eeb7.jpg

Another eBay purchase. This is for fine tuning the Denon 103 cart which currently lives on my 3012.

http://i98.photobucket.com/albums/l2...ps4a92725c.jpg

Some more sorbothane and some atacama speaker mounts for speakers. I found these bits at the bottom of an old tool box. Again a freebie and hopefully beneficial for my Paradise phonostage

http://i98.photobucket.com/albums/l2...psabc68b64.jpg

Finally, some nice thick Belkin shielded cable from MCRU with silver plated plug and silver fuse. This will be properly mounted onto the 301 plinth so to minimise drag on the motor and PSU unit.

http://i98.photobucket.com/albums/l2...ps3bdba3e3.jpg

I have a few other little surprises that I intend to fit to the 301 but that is dependent upon a couple of ebay auctions. :eyebrows:

There, thats you brought upto date. It will be another month before all this is reassembled and playing. Personally, I cant wait. :)